Web Design & SEO on the Gold Coast
I build websites and Google visibility for Gold Coast trade businesses — plumbers, electricians, builders, roofers. I'm in Benowa, so if you want to sit down with someone about it, that's a short drive rather than a Zoom call with an agency in another state.
Get My Free Website CheckWhat's different about winning work on the Gold Coast
The Gold Coast has an unusual number of trade businesses for its size, and most of them are chasing the same customers in the same handful of suburbs. That makes the map pack brutal. Being the fourth-best plumber in Robina earns you nothing, because almost nobody scrolls past the three businesses Google puts in the box.
It also has weather that creates work in bursts. A decent storm through the northern corridor and every roofer's phone goes at once — and the ones who get those calls are the ones already sitting in the map when it happens, not the ones who start thinking about their website afterwards.
And the growth corridors behave differently to the established suburbs. New estates out through Coomera and Pimpama are full of people who've just moved in, have no local tradie, and will find one entirely through their phone. Established areas like Ashmore, Benowa and Bundall run far more on referral — but those referrals still look you up before they ring.
Where I work
Anywhere on the Gold Coast, and I'll happily come to you. The suburbs I'm asked about most:
North
- Coomera
- Pimpama
- Helensvale
- Oxenford
- Hope Island
- Runaway Bay
- Labrador
- Arundel
Central
- Southport
- Benowa
- Ashmore
- Bundall
- Surfers Paradise
- Broadbeach
- Nerang
- Carrara
- Molendinar
South
- Robina
- Varsity Lakes
- Burleigh Heads
- Mermaid Beach
- Miami
- Palm Beach
- Currumbin
- Mudgeeraba
- Tallebudgera
Also across the border into Tweed Heads and down the northern NSW coast, and remotely anywhere in Australia — but the Gold Coast is home and it's where I can turn up in person.
What I do for Gold Coast trades
Websites built to get the phone ringing
Not a brochure. A site written for someone standing in a flooded laundry deciding who to call, with your number where a thumb can reach it and a reason to pick you over the next result.
Getting you into the Gold Coast map pack
The three businesses in the box take most of the clicks. That's decided partly by what's on your website — your business details, your local markup, whether Google can tell which suburbs you actually cover.
Suburb pages that mean something
Not nine copies of the same page with the town name swapped — Google spots that and it can work against you. A handful of pages written properly for the suburbs that actually earn you money.
Getting named by ChatGPT and Google's AI answers
More people every month ask an AI for a tradie instead of scrolling results. It names a couple of businesses. This is the work that makes you one of them.
Sell one of the trades specifically? Plumbers, electricians, roofers and builders each have their own page.
Who you're actually dealing with
Two Gold Coast businesses I've done this for. Neither is a tradie — they're cleaners — but both were paying for leads before we started, and neither is now.
I sold perfume door to door for five years. I thought I was good at it. I wasn't — what sold the perfume was the fragrance. I turned up and held the bottle.
Your website is supposed to be the fragrance. You're already doing the turning up: the van, the ads, the hours, the callouts at 2am. What's written on that site is the bit that has to do the persuading when you're not in the room.
Two businesses I helped build and sold went on to list on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. I moved to Australia in 2000 and have been building websites and generating leads for local trade businesses for the last ten years.
We used to spend up to $1,200 per week on Google AdWord campaigns for a steady workflow. In a matter of three months Hilton managed to get us ranked in the top position of the Google Map pack for multiple primary keywords, and implemented software that increased our reviews from 18 to over 100. No more AdWords or looking for customers.
I'd been paying for leads from Jim's, HiPages, OneFlare and word of mouth. Hilton promoted my page so that it appears in the Google 3 pack across a wide area for different keywords. This has totally transformed my business — I no longer pay for leads and have withdrawn from both HiPages and OneFlare.
Straight up: neither of those is a plumber — they're cleaners on the Gold Coast. Same game though, and both of them were paying good money for leads before we started.
Have a look at your site with me
Send me your website address and I'll come back with the three things costing you calls, plus what's holding your Google Maps listing back. No charge, and no phone call unless you want one.
Or ring me on 0488 845 404 — I'm in Benowa.